More and Cudworth against Hobbes

2021 ◽  
pp. 47-73
Author(s):  
Stewart Duncan
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Material World ◽  
Ralph Cudworth ◽  
Henry More ◽  
Cambridge Platonists

This chapter considers the criticisms of Hobbes made by two Cambridge Platonists, Henry More and Ralph Cudworth. The first half looks at their criticisms of Hobbes’s arguments: More’s replies to Hobbes’s arguments for materialism, and Cudworth’s replies to (what he took to be) Hobbes’s arguments for atheism. The second half of the chapter then looks at how More and Cudworth argued for the existence of immaterial beings that control the workings of the material world (the spirit of nature or plastic natures). These arguments imply that Hobbes’s materialist ontology is radically inadequate to explain the actual phenomena of the natural world.

Newton and Cambridge Platonism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Hutton
Keyword(s):  
Significant Part ◽  
Infinite Space ◽  
University Of Cambridge ◽  
Ralph Cudworth ◽  
Cambridge Platonism ◽  
Henry More ◽  
The University ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Cambridge Platonists

This article discusses Isaac Newton’s relations with two older colleagues at the University of Cambridge, Ralph Cudworth and Henry More, two of the so-called Cambridge Platonists,. It shows that there are biographical links between them, especially between More and Newton. Despite differences in theological outlook (e.g. on the Trinity), they shared intellectual interests and scholarly approach. All three were critical of Descartes, and More, like Newton, posited infinite space. In addition, there were parallels in their investigations of biblical prophecy—thanks to their debt to the Cambridge Bible scholar Joseph Mede. Newton drew on Cudworth and, like More, examined the texts of the Kabbala denudata. It is argued here that, although Newton differed from them in his conclusions, More and Cudworth were a significant part of Newton’s intellectual background.

From Cambridge Platonism to Scottish Sentimentalism

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael B. Gill
Keyword(s):  
Adam Smith ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Surface Appearance ◽  
Ralph Cudworth ◽  
Cambridge Platonism ◽  
Henry More ◽  
Moral Philosophers ◽  
Cambridge Platonists

The Cambridge Platonists were a group of religious thinkers who attended and taught at Cambridge from the 1640s until the 1660s. The four most important of them were Benjamin Whichcote, John Smith, Ralph Cudworth, and Henry More. The most prominent sentimentalist moral philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment – Hutcheson, Hume, and Adam Smith – knew of the works of the Cambridge Platonists. But the Scottish sentimentalists typically referred to the Cambridge Platonists only briefly and in passing. The surface of Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith's texts can give the impression that the Cambridge Platonists were fairly distant intellectual relatives of the Scottish sentimentalists – great great-uncles, perhaps, and uncles of a decidedly foreign ilk. But this surface appearance is deceiving. There were deeply significant philosophical connections between the Cambridge Platonists and the Scottish sentimentalists, even if the Scottish sentimentalists themselves did not always make it perfectly explicit.

The Problem of Universals in Early Modern Philosophy

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Nicolas Malebranche ◽  
Early Modern Philosophy ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Pierre Gassendi ◽  
Ralph Cudworth ◽  
Henry More ◽  
Scholastic Philosophy

The ancient topic of universals was central to scholastic philosophy, which raised the question of whether universals exist as Platonic forms, as instantiated Aristotelian forms, as concepts abstracted from singular things, or as words that have universal signification. It might be thought that this question lost its importance after the decline of scholasticism in the modern period. However, the fourteen contributions to this volume indicate that the issue of universals retained its vitality in modern philosophy. Modern philosophers in fact were interested in three sets of issues concerning universals: (1) issues concerning the ontological status of universals, (2) issues concerning the psychology of the formation of universal concepts or terms, and (3) issues concerning the value and use of universal concepts or terms in the acquisition of knowledge. Chapters in this volume consider the various forms of “Platonism,” “conceptualism,” and “nominalism” (and distinctive combinations thereof) that emerged from the consideration of such issues in the work of modern philosophers. The volume covers not only the canonical modern figures, namely, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant, but also more neglected figures such as Pierre Gassendi, Pierre-Sylvain Regis, Nicolas Malebranche, Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, and John Norris.

Thomas Traherne and Cambridge Platonism

PMLA ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 81 (7) ◽  
pp. 521-534 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol L. Marks
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Intensity ◽  
Spiritual Autobiography ◽  
Ideological Differences ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Thomas Traherne ◽  
Cambridge Platonism ◽  
Henry More ◽  
Cambridge Platonists

Although the Oxford-educated Thomas Traherne is indeed “thoroughly representative” of the “salient ideas” of the Cambridge Platonists, and without a doubt should be classed with them philosophically, he is most akin emotionally to that maverick among the Cambridge men, Peter Sterry. Yet ideological differences separate him from Sterry, and even the emotional intensity which seems to link them takes radically variant forms. The case is the same with Henry More, whose work we know Traherne read, and whose spiritual autobiography resembles Traherne's: their responses to the new ideas of space were remarkably alike in feeling, yet Traherne took issue vigorously with More's theories of space and deity, and in general lacked More's intellectual extravagance in other theological matters. We may, then, speak best of affinities with, rather than debts to, the Cambridge Platonists: the portrait of Traherne's mind shows an eclectic intellect and—more important in shaping Traherne's persistent individuality—original, highly personal feelings.

scholarly journals Philosophy, Religion, and Heterodoxy in the Philosophy of Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, and Anne Conway

2020 ◽  
Vol 100 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 157-171
Author(s):  
Sarah Hutton
Keyword(s):  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Religious Truth ◽  
Ralph Cudworth ◽  
Reason And Faith ◽  
Henry More ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

Abstract Philosophers who hold the compatibility of reason and faith, are vulnerable to the charge of opening the way to atheism and heterodoxy. This danger was particularly acute when, in the wake of Cartesianism, the philosophy of Spinoza and Hobbes necessitated a resetting of the relationship of philosophy with religion. My paper discusses three English philosophers who illustrate the difficulties for the philosophical defence for religion: Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, and Anne Conway, for all of whom philosophical and religious truth were deeply intertwined. But each of them also subscribed to heterodox religious beliefs. This raises questions of whether there is a direct the relationship between their philosophy and religious heterodoxy—whether they exemplify the charge that philosophy undermines religion, or indeed whether their defence of religion was a cover for heterodoxy.

A Cultural History of Objects in the Renaissance

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The West ◽  
Material World ◽  
Everyday Objects ◽  
Art And Literature ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Classical Knowledge ◽  
Cultural Movement

A Cultural History of Objects in the Renaissance covers the period 1400 to 1600. The Renaissance was a cultural movement, a time of re-awakening when classical knowledge was rediscovered, leading to an efflorescence in philosophy, art, and literature. The period fostered an emerging sense of individualism across European cultures. This sense was expressed through a fascination with materiality and the natural world, and a growing attachment to things. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Objects examines how objects have been created, used, interpreted and set loose in the world over the last 2500 years. Over this time, the West has developed particular attitudes to the material world, at the centre of which is the idea of the object. The themes covered in each volume are objecthood; technology; economic objects; everyday objects; art; architecture; bodily objects; object worlds.

Evangelicals and the Rise of Science

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Bruce Hindmarsh
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Material World ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
Spiritual Senses ◽  
Mechanical Philosophy ◽  
Nature And Grace ◽  
The World

The evangelical devotional attitude passed over into their view of the natural world as radiant with God’s presence. The God of nature and grace invited a response of “wonder, love, and praise”; this led them to perceive God as immediately present in the material world revealed by Newtonian science and described by mechanical philosophy. This is evident in John Wesley’s multifaceted interaction with science as a popular disseminator of natural knowledge, and Jonathan Edwards’s probing of the meaning of the Newtonian postulates. The attitude of worship, recalling the older “harmony of all knowledge,” was manifest especially in the Wesleyan and Edwardsian view of the spiritual senses and their profound rejection of dualism. In Charles Wesley’s poetry too we witness a devout response to the Holy Spirit’s presence in the material world. Instead of reflecting the reductionist “quantifying spirit” of the age, he responded to the world described by science with a unified sensibility.

The autos sacramentales of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Brooke
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Empirical Approach ◽  
Sacramental Theology ◽  
Individual Study ◽  
Material World ◽  
Autos Sacramentales ◽  
Christian Morality ◽  
Sor Juana

This study analyses the autos sacramentales, or Eucharistic plays, by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651–95). It focusses on their relationship to the changing currents of philosophical thought in the late-seventeenth century Hispanic world, from a mindset characterized by scepticism, Neostoicism, and suspicion of the material world as a source of truth, to an empirical approach to the natural world that understood the information received by the senses as a fallible, yet useful, provisional source of knowledge. By examining each play in turn, along with the introductory loa with which they were intended to be performed, the study explores how each drama seeks to integrate empirical ideas with a Catholic understanding of transubstantiation. At the same time, each individual study identifies new sources for these plays, and demonstrates how these illuminate, or nuance, present readings of the works. The study of El divino Narciso employs a previously little-known source to illuminate its Christological readings, as well as Sor Juana’s engagement with notions of wit and conceptism. The analysis of El cetro de José explores her presentation of different approaches to perception to emphasize the importance of both the material and the transcendent in understanding the sacraments. The final section, on San Hermenegildo, explores the influence of the Christianized stoicism of Justus Lipsius, and demonstrates how Sor Juana used this work to attempt her most ambitious reconciliation of an empirical approach to the material world with a Neostoic approach to Christian morality and orthodox Catholic sacramental theology.

Philalgia in Warwickshire: F. M. Van Helmont's Anatomy of Pain Applied to Lady Anne Conway

1958 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 196-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grace B. Sherrer
Keyword(s):  
Special Interest ◽  
John Locke ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Bodleian Library ◽  
Medical Theory ◽  
C 32 ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Henry More ◽  
Cambridge Platonists

Among the anomalies of the mind of Francis Mercury Van Helmont none is more striking than the deviation from contemporary medical theory which led him to formulate his ‘anatomy of pain’. Van Helmont's theory of the nature of pain is outlined in the British Museum MS. Sloane 530, variously referred to as ‘Observations’ and ‘Autobiographical Memoires'. A fuller statement and application of his theory appears in a Latin poem found among the papers of John Locke, a poem of special interest to students of the Cambridge Platonists because of its dedication to Lady Anne, Viscountess Conway, friend and correspondent of Henry More. The manuscript, now in the Bodleian Library, hsted as MS. Locke c. 32, fol. 47, contains 135 lines which are clearly legible, seven lines being illegible because of abrasion of the paper.

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